


it's the getting to the point that is the hardest part

by xtinethepirate



Series: Kintsugi [2]
Category: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Canon Disabled Character, Canon Jewish Character, Charles Being Concerned, Confessing Love Through Literature - freeform, Erik Has Feelings, Erik is not a Happy Bunny, Families of Choice, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, Love Letters, M/M, Sex and Poetry - freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-05
Updated: 2015-10-05
Packaged: 2018-04-24 21:18:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4935703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xtinethepirate/pseuds/xtinethepirate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,</i>
  <br/>
  <i>I love you directly without problems or pride:</i>
  <br/>
  <i>I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love,</i>
  <br/>
  <i>except in this form in which I am not nor are you,</i>
  <br/>
  <i>so close that your hand upon my chest is mine,</i>
  <br/>
  <i>so close that your eyes close with my dreams.</i>
</p><p>Erik decided to stay; that was the easy part. The hard part was making that decision work. The weeks, months, and years after the end of Kintsugi.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it's the getting to the point that is the hardest part

**Author's Note:**

> Originally, this epilogue was just a short coda on the end of _Kintsugi_. But, like tribbles or kipple, somehow it multiplied and expanded until it was fic-length in itself. It won't make sense if you haven't read _Kintsugi_ first.
> 
> The title is taken from the Bare Naked Ladies song "Call and Answer." Relevant lyrics: "I think it's getting to the point where I can be myself again / it's getting to the point where we have almost made amends / I think it's the getting to the point that is the hardest part."

EPILOGUE  
(it's the getting to the point that is the hardest part)

The next few months were some of the happiest of Charles’s life. 

Not that it was easy—Erik’s prediction on that front had been correct—but even with all the arguments with Hank, Moira, and Alex, with the questions of the children who picked up on their anger, and in the tense and skittish silences between himself and Erik, Charles still frequently found himself smiling so broadly his cheeks hurt. In retrospect, he imagined that it must have been disconcerting for them to be grinned at mid-argument, but in the face of his joy, all their words of caution and mistrust faltered and lapsed into silence. 

He’d had no illusions that the first weeks and months would run smoothly, but Charles had expected most of the resistance to come from other quarters, his own allies who deeply mistrusted Erik’s intentions. It was a challenge he had welcomed, especially since he and Erik had historically fared best when united for a common goal (or, for Erik, against a common enemy). But with their unexpectedly quick capitulation, Charles instead found that the biggest obstacle was in fact the space that had opened up between himself and Erik. 

It wasn’t immediately obvious: he and Erik quickly fell into comfortable arguments about everything as September approached and the school came together: how many students they should have and whether humans ought to be admitted (that argument was unsurprising); what courses they should offer in their curriculum (“combat skills” was, Charles felt, something of an overreach); and who ought to be teaching those courses (Erik was determined to take charge of Mutant History, while Charles preferred not to have a house full of teenaged proto-anarchists). With all the time they spent together drafting and revising and trying to enlist others to their perspectives, it was easy not to acknowledge the distance: it was subtle, catching at Charles’s attention only in the quiet moments. It was a wariness in the way Erik watched him, in the slight pauses between argument and answer, in the awkwardness of negotiating all their sharp edges, their triggers, their shared history and competing ideology to fit into the same house, the same life, once more. 

After that first morning spent drowsing side by side, Erik had retreated once more to his own room (or at least to the balcony outside it). He didn’t repeat his declaration of love, and Charles didn’t ask him to, didn’t peek into his head to see the feelings imprinted there. There were little gestures—like the way Charles would find a cup of tea ready and waiting for him every morning when he dragged himself downstairs at 7:45, when Erik had already been up for hours—that warmed his heart. There were others—unguarded moments when Charles would catch Erik looking at him like he wanted to devour him—that made it stop. 

Unable to forget how he’d abused his telepathy with Erik, Charles kept a careful distance both physically and psychically; he didn’t ask Erik for anything more even in those glimpsed moments of unvarnished _want_. The man knew his own mind better than most people Charles had met; if he wanted something, he’d take it. That he never did initiate, would instead turn away if he saw Charles watching him or take it as an opportunity to renew his passionate defense of why students needed to be taught offensive maneuvers—well. They had a rare friendship, and it was something he treasured. Unwilling to jeopardize it, Charles gathered together the shreds of his battered pride, and remained glad that Erik had stayed. 

For the most part, it worked. To his surprise, Hank supported Erik in the argument over a combat training course, pointing out how much such training had helped him and the others to embrace their abilities. They compromised on a course that emphasized defensive uses only, though Charles had no illusions that Erik wouldn’t sneak in some additional training on the side. Charles capitulated on Mutant History, so long as Erik agreed to let him review his lectures and guest-teach the course a few times to offer another view. In return, Erik agreed to make the memorial for their lost brothers and sisters, embedding their names in the stone balustrade on the back terrace in silver. Charles hadn’t cared for his mother’s candlesticks or the fancy silverware he’d never been allowed to touch; it was better put to use in Erik’s precise, elegant script, gleaming familiar names in the sunlight. 

Not all their conflicts were so easy to resolve. 

There was no question in Charles’s mind, for instance, of Erik attending the ceremony for him to be awarded the medal Moira had finally browbeaten him into accepting. Even if Erik wasn’t arrested on the spot (which was, to Charles’s mind, the best case scenario—more likely he’d be shot on sight instead), Charles was not convinced Erik wouldn’t take the opportunity to finish what he’d started at the White House months before. Not entirely comfortable going into a traditionally mutant-unfriendly place alone, however, he asked Moira to accompany him instead. She was clever and gorgeous and knew governmental agencies, and she could be deadly when it was needed—all that, and she was his friend. She seemed the most logical choice. 

Erik...did not agree. It led to their most vicious fight since he had come back to the estate for good, no holds-barred yelling at each other that made the rest of the house ring with shocked silence and gave Charles a psychic headache.

When they’d finally exhausted themselves without coming to any sort of agreement, Charles had made them both a martini as he soothed the anxieties of the children and smiled inwardly at Erik’s black glower. It was comforting, in a way, that Erik had started to feel secure enough in his place to fight Charles so unreservedly. Neither of them apologized, Erik downed the martini in two swallows and stormed out of the library in silence. But all the same, there was a cup of tea waiting for Charles the next morning, and the morning of the ceremony the day after. Erik, however, absented himself from the house entirely. A pity—Charles could have used the assistance with his bloody cufflinks. 

Events like these had populated Charles’s childhood: the ostentatious displays of wealth, the shrewd evaluation of social connections and power dynamics, the superficial smiles. He’d owned his first tuxedo before he’d started grade school. Still, he felt stiff and out of place at the ceremony, aware of every mind that saw his wheelchair first and him second, the veneer of pity over their thoughts that no expensively tailored suit or heroic deeds could strip away. It was everything he hated most about being a telepath, needing to respond to what was said instead of what was thought when the two never aligned. Though Moira’s quiet, caustic remarks made it less unbearable, it was still exhausting, and Charles was glad when it was over. 

Though Moira offered to have him stay with her, Charles couldn’t bear the thought of remaining in D.C. a moment longer than he had to. A benefit of being obscenely rich was to have his plane on standby for him to take him back to New York at any ungodly hour. So it was late by the time he reached the estate, so late that he would need coffee in the morning if he wanted to be remotely functional for his first class. Nevertheless, there was a light on in the library when he passed it on his way to bed. With a fond smile, Charles paused and pushed the door open. 

The only light on was the small lamp on a side table next to the couch. Erik was reclining on it, stretched full-length with his legs over the arm and a book in his hand, an empty highball glass on the floor next to him. 

“I hope you recall you have a 9:00 class,” Charles said lightly, undoing his bowtie and the top button of his shirt with relief. It was good to be home. 

“Mmm,” Erik said absently, turning a page. “Of the two of us, who’s more likely to have trouble with waking...” he trailed off as he looked up at Charles. Something in his expression shifted, and his mental shields came up so quickly that Charles’s head spun. He snapped the book shut and sat up in one fluid motion. “Did you enjoy yourself with the inestimable Agent McTaggert?”

Charles rubbed at his temples with a sigh, unwilling to be baited after such a long night. “She kept me from being bored to tears by roving packs of politicians, if that’s what you mean.”

Erik’s smile didn’t quite meet his eyes. “Congratulations on your escape, in that case.”

Again, that jagged sense of space, catching like a hangnail. Charles wanted to brush up against Erik’s mind, twine their thoughts together until there was no room for misunderstandings or space between word and thought. He missed that closeness keenly when Erik was to him as much a stranger as those he’d left in Washington, but he held himself in check. He wouldn’t betray Erik’s trust in him again by intruding where he wasn’t invited. 

There was a headache blooming behind his left eye, which didn’t bode well for a short night’s sleep. Charles tried to smile, but knew it looked more like a grimace. “Not entirely unscathed, I’m afraid; I’d best get some sleep. Goodnight, Erik.”

A flick of Erik’s fingers, and the room went dark. “Goodnight.”

Telepathic headaches that lingered like this were fortunately rare events, but Charles kept a stock of painkillers by his bed just in case. He’d downed two pills in quick succession and was feeling pleasantly hazy, drifting on the edge of painless sleep, when he heard his name. He cracked his eyes open, but he was alone in his room. 

_Charles_ it came again, insistent on the edge of his mind. Erik’s voice. With his telepathy already unfurled and languid from the drugs, it was easy to follow the thin psychic tendril with a soft query. 

He saw himself as he’d looked earlier that evening, or at least how Erik perceived him (Charles didn’t believe his lips were really that red or his eyes that blue). With his tie undone and his hair mussed from running his hands through it, he looked rather disheveled. As the disorientation of seeing himself in Erik’s mind started to resolve, Charles became aware of heat, or water hitting his back. The vision-Charles smiled, slow and sly, and touched his fingers to his temple. The perspective changed sharply, like he’d fallen to his knees. 

_Charles._

Oh. _Oh_. Stunned and sluggish and tangled up in Erik’s thoughts, Charles opened his eyes in an attempt to give him some privacy. He hadn’t retreated enough from Erik’s mind, though, and it was his eyes that snapped open instead. 

A momentary glimpse of bare skin, water slipping over abdominal muscles and strong thighs. Erik’s cock in his hand. 

“Fuck,” Charles said, with his own mouth or Erik’s he wasn’t certain. It was difficult to recall where he ended and Erik began, where the other minds in the house lay. He scrambled backward, clumsy, and managed to pull himself free. Back in his own body his heart was pounding, cheeks burning with mortification at spying on Erik in such a private moment. He’d broken Erik’s trust again. He felt sick. 

_Charles?_ Erik’s voice in his mind was as firm and deliberate as a knock on the door. Charles squeezed his eyes shut and tugged the blankets up higher, as if that would somehow undo the last few minutes or make them a dream. He couldn’t take the coward’s way out and project the impression that he was sleeping; he owed Erik more than that. 

_I didn’t mean to intrude,_ he whispered, concentrating to keep the communication purely verbal, though it made his temples throb. He did not need to know if Erik were still in the shower, still hard. 

There was a long, long pause, during which Charles’s heart performed the anatomical impossibility of sinking down into his stomach. Then, a soft knock at his door before it opened and Erik slipped in quietly. He was dressed in his pyjamas, though his hair was still damp and curling from the shower. Charles tried to push himself up on his elbows. 

“You sounded strange,” Erik said, tapping his temple as he walked over. “What’s wrong?” He sat down on the edge of the bed, brow furrowed.

Charles shook his head, embarrassed. “Nothing, I...I thought you were calling me. I’m sorry.”

“Ah.” Erik rubbed the back of his neck and huffed what was almost a laugh. “Well. I suppose I was. Sorry to have disturbed you.”

“No,” Charles reached for him, fumbling and awkward, as Erik started to stand. “No I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—are you all right?”

Erik caught his hand easily, and for a moment Charles’s mind was awash with warmth and affection, psychic impressions from their touch. He reeled his mind back in, straining against it like it was a living thing. He blinked hard, tried to focus. 

“Charles,” Erik said very, very deliberately, looking down at him. “Are you high?” He looked like he was trying not to laugh. 

“Headache. Took some painkillers,” he said, uncertain whether he was speaking aloud or not. He usually slept after taking them, let his telepathy lie dormant over the house. 

Erik’s hand brushed across his forehead, still shower-warm, and Charles felt his eyes slip shut. “I’m sorry,” he said again. 

“Stop apologizing to me, Charles,” Erik said, and he sounded regretful, but perhaps that was just the drugs lulling Charles back into sleep. 

His dreams were restless and half-formed, snippets of other minds and lives and dreams fading in and out of focus in a confusing kaleidoscope. Charles woke early, blinking away his drugged lassitude, grateful at least that his headache was gone. He could remember, with mortifying clarity, the entire exchange from the previous evening, and his mind kept churning over the same point over and over again: it hadn’t been a fantasy version of himself he’d seen in Erik’s mind’s eye, or even himself ten years ago when he’d been younger and happier and capable of more athletic sex. It was Charles as he was now, in his chair, rumpled and tired and using his powers. That’s what Erik wanted to masturbate to. The thought made Charles’s skin prickle pleasantly, but he knew better than most that what one might fantasize about in one’s mind did not necessarily correlate to what one desired in reality. He tried to put it aside and go back to sleep, but the thought lingered as the sky beyond his window started to lighten.

When Erik came downstairs at 6:00 the next morning per his routine, Charles was already on his second cup of coffee. 

“I couldn’t sleep,” he offered with a rueful smile at Erik’s visible consternation. After the mishap of the previous night, he was very aware of _looking_ at Erik in the tight t-shirt and sweatpants that he wore to go running, but he didn’t want to overcompensate and _not_ look at him either. He raised his mug in a small salute. “If one can’t beat insomnia.... Besides, by now, I think I owe you a few dozen cups for all the tea you’ve left out for me. I’ll have a fresh pot on when you get back.”

Erik scanned his face for a moment before he nodded, slowly. “Thank you.” He headed toward the door without further comment—not unexpected, as he had always been more than usually taciturn in the morning. 

After a few seconds, however, as Charles returned to his newspaper and his coffee, the terrace door opened again. Charles looked over his shoulder to find Erik leaning against the doorframe, watching him. 

“Do you want to come with me?” he asked.

“I’m afraid I wouldn’t quite be able to keep up.”

“No,” Erik replied, looking past Charles. “I mean,” he tapped his temple, “come with me.”

“Oh.” Charles blinked at the unexpected offer. “I...are you sure you’d want me to?”

“Assuming you aren’t going to talk the entire time.”

Charles’s cheeks ached; he realized he was grinning. “I make no promises,” he said primly.

The morning was cool and misty, and the bare skin of Erik’s arms prickled as he set off at a slow, easy pace along the gravel path, warming into his run. Sitting in the kitchen with his hands curled around a forgotten mug of coffee, Charles took in the morning with him: the sun rising over the trees and burning off the wisps of fog; the rhythmic thud of Erik’s heart and the pleasant burn of his muscles as his long legs ate up the miles; the utter clarity and stillness of his mind. 

He didn’t open his eyes again until he saw himself through Erik’s, a hint of warmth colouring his perception before Charles severed the connection between them. 

“Thank you, Erik,” he said, brushing his thumb briefly under his eyes before turning to smile at him, “that was beautiful.”

“If you got out of bed at a reasonable hour more often, that wouldn’t come as a surprise.”

The words were sardonic, but his contentment was so palpable that it sank into Charles’s skin and wrapped around his mind, as though Erik were the telepath of the two of them. It left him feeling oddly exposed, vulnerable—and likely rather dopey, if the way Erik raised an eyebrow at him before striding over to the coffee maker was any indication. 

The pot was still empty; Erik’s sigh, audible. Still dizzy with the intensity of Erik’s contentedness, with the intimacy of having shared his mind and his breath and being welcomed there, Charles grinned unapologetically at him. “I’m sorry to throw off your perfect routine,” he lied as Erik returned to the table and stole Charles’s coffee instead. “I’m sure you’ll survive for being two minutes off schedule.” 

What Erik undoubtedly hoped would be a withering glower was spoiled by a grimace as he tasted the sugary, cream-heavy concoction, now cold, that was the only way Charles could stand to drink coffee. Taking pity on him, Charles reached up and retrieved his mug. “I’ll have a fresh pot ready when you’re out of the shower. Go on; you’re filthy.”

“Not all of us get our exercise by proxy,” Erik pointed out. Briefly, his eyes dropped to Charles’s lips, and he felt the atmosphere in the room change, the question hanging in the air, unspoken. He licked his lips, saw Erik’s eyes track the movement. 

A beat, and Erik smiled, tightness in the lines around his eyes. “None of your 90% cream and sugar swill, Charles,” he said pointedly, drawing back.

“Would you like me to come with you?” Charles blurted out quickly, extending the offer he’d hoped Erik would make, if he’d read the heat in his gaze properly. It would be humiliating to be wrong, horrifying if he made Erik uncomfortable, but he thought....

Erik stilled at the question, and Charles thought briefly, desperately, that he could surely wipe away his memories of the entire morning, let them meld into his drug-induced dreams from the night before, if the floor failed to swallow him up at this moment. 

“That depends,” Erik said very slowly. “Will you forget about the coffee again if I let you?”

 _Whoever it was you wanted in your bed, it wasn’t me_. Charles reflected on that accusation as he looked at Erik’s small smile. Though his eyes were bright with mirth, he still looked wary, as though Charles might retract the offered intimacy again any moment. Erik had been waiting for him as much as he had Erik, both of them too aware of what flawed and shabby selves they had to offer to see that they were wanted, just as they were. 

“Undoubtedly.” Charles reached up to grab the front of his t-shirt and pull him down. “You are terribly hard done by. Now, if you’d stop being so impossibly tall for a moment, I’d like a kiss.”

For a moment, Erik’s expression was beautifully, heartbreakingly unguarded; Charles closed the last few inches between them, and let everything else fade as their lips met. 

When they broke apart, Erik remained leaning over Charles, forehead resting against his and one hand braced on the back of his chair. “Yes—” he began, then had to clear the hoarseness from his voice. “Yes, you can come with me. Just up here, though,” he added with a chuckle, brushing his thumb over Charles’s temple. “I still have to teach this morning.”

There was promise in his voice, a promise that made heat shiver down Charles’s spine. He swallowed with some difficulty: Erik smelled like heat and sweat and the leaf loam he’d been running through, and Charles wanted to kiss every inch of him instead of having this conversation. “We, ah. If you want...more than just telepathy, we’ll have to discuss logistics at some point.”

Erik’s grin broadened, slow and toothy. “Oh yes. I intend to...discuss logistics at length, with hands-on instruction, and many, many examples.” He kissed Charles again, quick and hot. “But don’t think telepathy is entirely off the table, Charles; I have plans for that too.”

“Of course you do,” Charles said faintly. “You’re a walking ulterior motive. Are you always this...energetic in the morning?”

“You should see me when I’m caffeinated,” Erik retorted, but his cheeks were pink. Good Lord, he was _blushing_. Amazed, Charles ran his fingers along one cheekbone. He could cancel morning classes, surely, just once, to see how far that blush might extend.

He dropped his hand, and Erik momentarily swayed forward after the touch before he caught himself. 

“Go shower,” Charles said, pleased by how steady his voice was. “You’re not skivving off on your 9:00, Professor Lehnsherr.”

Slowly, Erik straightened. Charles could see the outline of his prick, half-hard, clearly against the fabric of his sweatpants. He made a soft, strangled noise, half-whimper and half-moan, and tried to grab for Erik again, but his watch shifted on his wrist and magnetized against the arm of his chair. 

“Oh no,” Erik said. “I have a class to prepare for, remember? For now you can watch, but not touch.” The metal hummed against Charles’s skin. “Maybe you can clear time in your schedule this afternoon for us to meet about...logistics.”

Helpless with frustrated lust, Charles let his head drop back. “I hate you.”

“No,” Erik said, as though it were a revelation, “you don’t.”

*

Charles found himself hoarding little moments in his memories after that as the semester got under way, tiny, polished pieces of their lives that he could take out and examine in private moments:

The first time Erik asked, tense and wrapped in a pretense of indifference, if he could spend the night in Charles’s bed. They didn’t have sex, weren’t quite ready for that yet, but the look on Erik’s face when Charles said yes and again when he woke the next morning to find Charles watching him, warmed him through with their unguarded intimacy. 

The night that Charles was woken by a nightmare that wasn’t Erik’s, but Alex’s. By the time Charles had made it out of bed, into his chair, and down the hall, Erik was already there. Through the gap of the open bedroom door, Charles saw them out on the balcony, saw Erik hand Alex a beer. They didn’t speak, but after a moment, some of the tension in Alex’s shoulders dissipated. Having never experienced war himself, not in the same way, Charles left them alone. 

The morning that Hank absent-mindedly asked Erik to pass him the sugar at breakfast instead of steadfastly ignoring him, and the way both of them looked comically surprised by such a small gesture. 

The genuine pride on Erik’s face after his first lecture on Mutant History which, Charles knew (despite Erik’s efforts to hide it), had come after a few sleepless nights of drafting and re-drafting his lecture notes.

The evening he’d gone to the library to catch up on some reading, to find Erik painstakingly helping Peter with his homework. They were both still a bit stiff around each other, sitting further apart than was strictly necessary, but Peter’s mind was bright with an eagerness to impress; Erik’s wary with the desire not to say something wrong. Charles took his book and left them to it. 

The first time they tried to have sex beyond voyeurism and masturbation was, admittedly, something of a disaster, but Charles added the memory to his collection nevertheless. Despite their frank talk about what Erik could realistically expect, he had been completely, single-mindedly focussed on Charles’s pleasure, on getting Charles off. It was lovely in theory, but when Charles’s body wouldn’t cooperate and his ability to sink into Erik’s pleasure telepathically instead was marred by Erik’s self-recrimination and desperation to make this _work_ , to make Charles happy, they both had ended up hurt and embarrassed. 

And yet, when Charles snapped at him out of frustration and humiliation and turned away to shut him out, Erik repressed his first, instinctive desire to snarl back and retreat to his own room. His mind ticked over fretfully, running through and discarding various ideas of things to say, how to proceed, but he stayed. After a few minutes, the utter farce of it all hit Charles as being genuinely quite funny. 

“Not laughing at you,” he managed to say breathlessly, waving one hand over his shoulder at Erik. “Just...I thought the time I lost my virginity would be the worst sex I ever had.”

“Mmm. And being the worst fuck you’ve ever had is supposed to make me feel better?”

Picturing his facial expression made Charles laugh all the harder until, with an aggrieved sigh, Erik manhandled him over onto his back and pointedly kissed him again and again until they were both laughing into each other’s mouths. 

It was better after that. Without the pressure to have everything be perfect, without needing to use sex as a way to prove to themselves that they still could fit together, it was better, it was _good_. Or, as Erik teased repeatedly when they were naked and spent and Charles was murmuring nonsensical words of endearment into his shoulder, “better than ‘the worst lay of your life’ isn’t much of a bar to clear, Charles.” 

Eventually, as fall turned into winter, Charles stopped trying to preserve each happy moment in his mind. Erik was sound asleep in bed (their bed; Charles hadn’t slept alone in months) next to him, stretched out on his stomach. He had been memorizing the moment, how beautiful Erik looked naked on their crumpled sheets, lax in the aftermath of orgasm, when he realized he didn’t have to. All of the closely-guarded moments, hoarded in a store of happiness deep in his mind were, Charles realized, held against the day that Erik left him again. But Erik would be there tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that, sitting in his office and reading in the library and sprawled trustingly and vulnerably skin-to-skin in the bed they shared.

“You’re thinking very loudly,” came a disgruntled mumble from somewhere in the pillows. 

Charles thought of the words he hadn’t yet been able to say, and bit his lower lip hard. Not tonight, but soon, he thought. Soon. He leaned over to kiss Erik’s hair, and settled down to sleep. 

And as winter turned back into spring, Erik went for his run at 6:00 every morning, though Charles swore and tried to burrow under the pillows. And every morning he made Charles tea when he came back and woke him up with a kiss. Every day there were small moments snatched in Charles’s office, or in affectionate bursts of telepathy. Every evening there was their chess game, and the long look exchanged when they went into their separate rooms that promised a reunion once Charles sensed that everyone else was asleep, or close enough.

_Soon._

*

In retrospect, Charles wasn’t sure where it began. If he had to guess, he would say it was when the Mutant Registration Act made it on the ballot in South Carolina, with full support from the governor.

“If they have nothing to hide, then they have nothing to fear!” the man was quoted frequently as saying. 

Charles laughed it off the first time he saw the nonsense in the newspaper. The governor had an abysmal approval rating in the state, and this initiative seemed a transparent attempt to garner voter support in the lead-up to the coming year’s mid-term election. Still, he allocated funds to the man’s opponent, and publicly supported the counter-measure.

However, Erik’s runs in the morning became longer, and his mind was always a snarl of irritation when he got back from them. Charles didn’t notice the first time he missed a chess game—it was drawing toward the end of term, and they both had more than their share of work to do. And Erik was working hard, coming to bed later and later every night. 

It was mid-August when Charles realized they had missed their evening game almost every night since the Fourth of July, when they’d both gotten incredibly drunk and Erik had held on to Charles as they had sex like he was terrified he’d disappear if he let go. 

They had stopped fighting, too. He hadn’t missed the habitual bickering at first, since it was nice to ask for something on occasion without having to explain and justify, especially when making adjustments to the curriculum for the coming year. But silence had flowed in around the edges. Charles felt sick that it had taken him so long to notice it.

He tracked Erik down in his office on a Sunday afternoon, having had a quiet word with Hank about taking the few children who resided at the estate over the summer out on a field trip. When he opened the door to find Erik surrounded by newspapers, when he saw the hunted look on Erik’s face, he knew. 

The past few months had been quiet and calm for Charles only. Erik had been chasing politics through the newspapers, finding similar laws being introduced or quietly passed across the states. When Charles had been distracted by the start of a new school year and all the budgetary concerns it brought, Erik had been tracking down Trask’s former colleagues and students, and actively trying not to start the small, habitual fights they’d always had, lest they trigger a larger, relationship-ending one. 

It was fragile, Charles realized. Everything he had taken for granted, been so happy to have. It was so fucking fragile. 

“Are you leaving?” he asked, looking around at the newspapers instead of at Erik. 

When Erik didn’t immediately reply, he knew the answer was “yes.”

Bitterness burned in his eyes, slicked the back of his throat. But instead of yelling, Charles wheeled himself over the papers and around Erik’s desk to hug him close. 

“I’m sorry,” Erik’s voice was tight. 

He meant it too, which was worse. For almost a year, he’d managed to live up to the promise he’d made to Charles, to the others at the school, and now it was all falling apart. Charles squeezed his eyes tightly shut, then sat back, brushing away the threatening tears. “You know I can’t help you with this, Erik.”

“I know.” 

His voice was level, but Charles had to pull his mind in close to avoid feeling the pain Erik was in. That it hurt Erik too was no comfort: Erik would gladly martyr himself if he truly believed it would change the world for the better. 

If Charles once again asked him to stay, however....

If Charles asked him to stay, Erik would. He would stay, and their relationship would be damaged beyond repair. 

“All right. Then show me what you’ve found.”

*

It was a muggy August morning when Erik left, clouds piling up on the horizon and promising rain for the afternoon. The plants could probably use it, Charles thought, distractedly. Erik had left long before the sun had come up, and it had only been Charles waking up that had kept him from leaving without a goodbye. It would take some time before that stopped hurting, though Charles understood why he’d done it.

It was almost 7:00; on any ordinary day, Erik would be getting back from his run and making Charles tea about now. Perhaps this was the morning Charles would have been able to tell him he loved him. He closed his eyes and let his mind drift outward, glancing over sleeping minds and waking ones in an outward spiral. Though he’d taken the helmet with him, Erik wasn’t yet wearing it, and Charles brushed against his bright, familiar mind, heading north. He didn’t say it today, not now that Erik had left, but he couldn’t help but whisper _be safe_ into his mind, the way he had before Erik had left through the balcony doors. 

Peter, the dear boy, was the first person Charles sought out. The tension in the house for the past two weeks had been obvious to everyone, but perhaps not its implications: the moment Peter saw Charles, his face fell. His relationship with Erik might have been short and stilted, but he was still his son. 

“So, is he coming back, or is this one of those permanent, going-to-take-over-the-world kind of super-villain deals?” Peter asked sarcastically, a play at diffidence so transparent that Charles wanted to give him a hug. If he’d been only a few years younger, he might still have offered. Teenagers were more prickly beasts; he’d learned that the hard way with Raven. 

“I hope he’ll come back. I’ve tried to impress upon him that this is his home, too.” 

It was too much; he wasn’t yet distanced enough from his own hurt to keep it out of his voice. Peter looked at him sidelong, and Charles wondered what he knew. They had always tried to be discreet, but...well. There was only so much caution one could exercise when the lad could be in and out of a room before one even noticed him approaching. 

“I hope you know you have a place here, regardless of what your father does,” Charles said carefully, deciding to forgo platitudes. Peter was a smart lad and would see through empty rhetoric; unfortunately, he might also take the assurance that Erik loved him as being just so many meaningless words. 

“Whatever,” Peter shrugged and shoved his hands into his pockets. “He’s been a shitty dad for a lot longer than he’s been a shitty friend,” he stopped, then muttered as an afterthought, “sorry. You doing okay, Prof?”

Charles reached up and took his hand, gave it a little squeeze. Already trying to look after others before himself; oh Erik, you should be proud of your son. “I’ll let the language go this time, young man,” he said primly, not answering the question. “Fuck knows he deserves it.”

It had the desired effect of making Peter laugh, and Charles waved him off to go take care of breakfast as he had lesson plans to revise now that Erik wouldn’t be teaching his classes. In the safety of his office, he placed his palms flat on his desk, closed his eyes, and just breathed. In his mind’s eye, he touched the memories he had held onto, flipping through the moments of peace and happiness and love.

*

It was November before Charles saw Erik again. He was giving a talk at Georgetown when he felt the tickle of a familiar mind against his own. The auditorium was huge and crowded, all the seats taken and the aisles filled with people both mutant and baseline standing to hear him. The sudden presence was so unexpected that Charles stumbled in his speech, laughed and apologized to the crowd as he felt warm amusement against his mind, and frantically scanned the faces as he resumed. Still, it wasn’t until the floor was opened up to questions that he caught a brief glimpse, fedora and leather jacket, moving toward the exit. A soft sensation of regret in his mind; D.C. was too dangerous still for him to linger overlong in a crowd supporting a mutant rights talk.

 _San Francisco,_ Charles thought quickly, desperately. _I’ll be there in January._. 

There was no answer. The next morning, his talk made headlines across newspapers, with some hailing him as the next Martin Luther King, Jr. (a comparison that Charles felt disgustingly overstated his importance) and others calling him a deviant poisoning the minds of good Americans everywhere. 

A brief story on the third page touched on the protest that had been planned to block him from speaking on campus. A severe accident had occurred on the road, however, when two of the busses carrying protestors had collided on the highway. Mechanical failure, was the preliminary finding of the investigation.

*

It was a relief to get out of New York in January, when the cold and damp seeped into his bones and the nights seemed especially dark and long, his students especially listless. Charles’s mood started to rise the moment he got off the plane, when he was met by graduate students who seemed genuinely interested in his research. Berkeley was beautiful, and while it wasn’t precisely warm out, it was at least above freezing. Indulging in the lack of snow and responsibilities, Charles bundled himself up to sit outside whenever he could, explored the city’s bookstores, lingered in parks in the misty evenings.

He had forgotten Erik completely, if he was honest, until his third night in the city, when he returned to his hotel room to find him sitting on his bed, reading a book Charles had picked up the day before. 

“This is fascinating, Charles,” Erik said blandly, as though they had been in the middle of a conversation, as though they hadn’t gone without speaking for almost half a year. “Are you planning to add this to your curriculum:

Please master can I touch your cheek  
please master can I kneel at your feet  
please master can I loosen your blue pants  
please master can I gaze at your golden haired belly  
please master can I gently take down your shorts  
please master can I have your thighs bare to my eyes  
please master can I take off your clothes below your chair  
please master can I kiss your ankles and soul  
please master can I touch lips to your muscle hairless thigh.”

He trailed off significantly, turned the page and scanned a few more lines, then looked up at Charles with eyebrows raised. “You’ve become rather more permissive in your dotage, Charles.”

“Hello,” Charles said quietly, still paused at the door. “I didn’t think you were coming.”

Erik closed the book around his finger and smiled. With his free hand he gestured, and Charles’s chair moved itself further into the room, the lock clicking shut behind him. “I missed your lecture on happiness and optimism and world peace, I’m afraid; fortunate, as it gave me time to catch up on my reading.” His eyes glinted mischievously. 

“‘Peace,’ in and of itself, isn’t a concept worthy of mockery, old friend,” Charles pointed out, shifting from his chair to the mattress. There had been sirens all last night, he recalled, but he had put it down to being back in a city again. He hated that Erik’s presence made him suspicious. “Are there more suspicious bus crashes I should ask about?”

“Are you confusing me with the local transit authority?” Erik’s hand slid up under Charles’s sweater, pressed warm against his ribcage. 

“Georgetown, Erik. A number of protesters died thanks to ‘mechanical failure.’”

Next to him, Erik stilled, then withdrew his hand. “I’m flattered that you think me omnipresent, Charles, but if you’ll recall I was in the auditorium that afternoon, not lurking next to highways.” He shrugged, “That said, I can’t say I shed many tears over them.”

“No, I don’t imagine you would.” Relieved, Charles let his head fall back against the headboard. He didn’t dip into Erik’s mind to confirm he was telling the truth; though he wasn’t foolish enough to believe Erik was always honest with him, the murder of anti-mutant protestors was not something he would bother to lie about. “Should I flatter myself to think you only came to California to see me as well?”

Erik breathed out hard, and glanced at Charles out of the corner of his eye.

Ah. Charles raised his hand to forestall any admission. “No, let me keep my illusions of happiness, optimism, and world peace for a few more hours, thank you.” 

“World peace and ‘mechanical failure,’” Erik mused, and there was a trace of humour in his voice again. “Do you hold me accountable when your toaster stops working, too?”

“Shut up,” Charles groaned, turning to press his face into Erik’s shoulder. “Or, actually, don’t shut up. Keep reading to me?”

“Yes, we need to discuss this book further, Charles. A collection of moral deviancy and smut called _The Fall of America_ ? I’ve rubbed off on you more than I thought.” The innuendo laid heavy on the words.

With a brief, pointed glance up at him, Charles pushed up the hem of Erik’s shirt to scrape his nails across his stomach, down to flick open the button of his fly. Erik’s breath caught in a gratifying way, and hissed out between his teeth when Charles stilled his hand once more. 

_Read to me,_ Charles whispered into his mind. 

“Please master, press my mouth to your prick-heart,” Erik continued hoarsely after a moment, and Charles undid his trousers the rest of the way. “Please master press my face into your belly, pull me slowly strong-thumbed / till your dumb hardness fills my throat to the base—”

The book fell forgotten by the side of the bed when Charles took him in his mouth, but the sounds pulled from Erik’s throat and, later, the ragged way he ordered Charles to _fuck me, please Charles, fuck—_ , was sweeter than any poetry could be. 

When Charles finally dragged himself out of sleep to realize he’d missed the conference breakfast being held in his honour and his flight home, Erik and the book were gone. There was a postcard resting on the side table, leaning against a cup of tea (still strong and sweet, though no longer warm), scrawled hastily in stark black ink:

“O please master do fuck me like that / while I cry out your name I do love you” — E

With a groan, Charles sank back down against the mattress, pressing his face into bedclothes that still smelled like sex and come. It would be a long goddamned winter.

*

There were short, stolen moments all through the spring and into the summer, never more than a few months spent entirely apart. Charles had always been something of a homebody by preference, but as soon as the students left Westchester in May he began traveling across the United States, with occasional longer trips up to Canada or Europe. More lectures meant more awareness of the school, which meant more funding: being independently wealthy could only heat and light the estate and feed the growing hoardes of teenage students for so long.

Though he balked at Charles’s increased visibility and the risk it posed both for him and the young mutants entrusted to his care, Erik found him on most trips, for a night, for the weekend, for a stolen few hours of arguments that always lead to kissing, touching, forgetting all the space between them for as long as they could. When Charles was back in Westchester, he would sometimes wake to hear the balcony door opening or the feeling of a warm body slip between the sheets next to him. 

Erik didn’t write to him often, between their visits, just the occasional postcard in the mail from places Charles was sure Erik had long since left or had never visited. He too smart or too paranoid to leave anything approaching a paper trail. The scanty communication was fair, Charles supposed: he didn’t write to Erik at all; couldn’t, without knowing where he would be from one week to the next. 

When they arrived, Erik’s messages were brief, almost terse, full of polite inquiries into the school, Charles’s health, the state of Peter’s studies. Nothing after that first (which Charles kept in his bedside drawer) that would raise suspicions should one of the children read the note first. Careful, always so careful, though Charles could see the places where Erik’s pen had hesitated on the paper, the deep groove of the nib on the closing “yours, E,” all the small indications of impatient restraint and words too dangerous to be said. 

He missed it the first time, hidden as it was amongst the standard questions to which he could never write an answer. The phrase was odd: “plain as the sovereign nose of your arrogant face.” Though Erik had certainly called him arrogant and naive more than once, his English idiom was always flawless. It troubled Charles for a few days, but there were lessons to assign, reports to grade, students with burgeoning powers to reassure. 

It wasn’t until a few months after the note, when the phrase had all but vanished from Charles’s mind, that he found it. He’d taken a quiet weekend to himself, shut up in the library with a brandy, a fire on, and a book as a heavy and cold October rain lashed the estate with a reminder that winter would come before long. There, in a slim book of Neruda’s verse that he thought Hank may have purchased after the Nobel ceremony a few years before—perhaps earlier; Charles had no memory of the book or when it had shown up in his library; he’d simply chosen something he could put down quickly when he was inevitably disturbed—he found the phrase in the middle of “I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.” 

The imagery of being loved so intensely as to be devoured certainly was accurate; if not entirely comforting, it encapsulated Erik utterly. When Alex knocked on his door an hour later, Charles interrupted him before he could get a word in edgewise to ask that he bring down the small packet of postcards from his bedside table. He was almost through the book by then, reading and re-reading each poem until it was engraved in his mind. 

As he suspected, reading postcard against poetry, each letter had something, coded and hidden amongst the banal phrasing, little quirks that Charles had barely noticed if at all, in his relief to have continued proof that Erik was alive and well. The words were sometimes slightly different—Charles suspected that Erik was not working from a translation, as he was—but line after line of love poetry shone from their casual concealment. 

The next time Erik snuck into his room in the middle of the night, Charles was careful to distract him long enough to slip a piece of paper into his pocket with two lines carefully chosen inscribed on it: “Even before you, the summer will arrive / On its honeysuckle feet, in your bedroom .”

*

The city was buzzing with minds panicked and confused and perversely excited, people craning their necks to get a better view of the destruction even as police in riot gear tried to move them back. Helicopters overhead almost drowned out the sound of sirens.

It had been only five hours since Hank had burst into his office and turned on the radio over Charles’s protests. Five hours since he’d felt his heart stop in his chest as the anchor solemnly reported an update on the latest terrorist attack by the mutant Magneto, now presumed dead after the heroic response by the National Guard, since Hank and Peter had got the jet ready for them to fly to Arizona. Five hours that felt like an eternity. 

_ERIK!_ Charles screamed over the noise of the minds and voices around him. The dust had settled around the destroyed laboratory, the rubble in which news crews were reporting Magneto was buried. He didn’t believe it; couldn’t. He would know if Erik was dead. He would _know_. He cast his mind out, seeking one brilliant mind amongst all the others. 

“Sir, I’m going to need you to come with me,” a brusque, officious voice broke Charles’s concentration. 

He turned, mind coiled to lash out in his fear and grief, wipe clean the last few hours from the mind of the burly police officer, but familiar eyes flickered gold in the bearded features and Charles went limp with relief. “Raven? Is he—?”

“Come with me, sir,” she repeated tersely, and he choked back the words. Of course; they were still very much in public. He nodded shakily, and reached up to pat Peter’s hand with a reassurance he didn’t feel. 

It wasn’t until they were far away from the crowds and the news crews that Raven shifted back into her blonde form. Her expression was drawn and pale, but she wasn’t injured that Charles could tell. With the news completely focussed on Erik’s actions, he’d had no idea she had joined him again. “You’re all right,” he said, his throat tight, reaching out to pull her down for a hug. 

“Yeah, yeah, _now_ you’re worried about me,” she said gruffly into his ear, but she squeezed him tightly. “It’s ok, Charles; I’m ok. He’s ok. He’ll be even more pleasant to be around now that he has some broken bones, but he’ll survive if I don’t kill him first.”

“Get in line,” Charles murmured, and she laughed. It was shaky and thin, betraying how scared she had also been, but Charles held himself back from soothing it from her mind. 

The safe house was dark, and cramped, easy to overlook among rows of empty warehouses with broken windows and faded signs. Charles tried not to look around too obviously at the small camp stove and cot, the ratty furniture. Peter had gone in to check on Erik first and Hank had left to retrieve their car, leaving him alone with Raven for the first time in...Christ, it had been years. 

“How long have you two been...?” he trailed off, that question treading a bit too close to questions he’d had about her relationship with Erik for years. Erik had dodged answering him after his escape from the Pentagon, which had probably been the wisest course of action. 

“What are you asking, Charles?” she asked, handing him a chipped mug with something approximating tea in it. She knew him well; he curled his hands around the warm ceramic gratefully. “I’m not having sex with your boyfriend, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

He choked and almost dropped the mug, weak tea splashing over the side onto his trousers. “Raven, I—that’s—”

She smiled at him crookedly, looking over her shoulder toward the other room to make sure they were still alone. “Don’t think I wasn’t tempted, Charles. After years of making me watch you pick up empty-headed co-eds, you bring home a hot, German mutant? Are you kidding? It would serve you right if I did sleep with him.” She bit her lower lip, obviously enjoying the contortions Charles was going through to try not to think about his sister’s sex life. “You could have told me, you know. That you...liked men. It wouldn’t have mattered to me.”

“Rather more than ‘like’ in this instance, I’m afraid,” he admitted, setting the mug aside to rest his face in his hands. He didn’t entirely know why he hadn’t trusted her with his secret when they shared everything else. Maybe it was because they shared so much: he couldn’t have borne it if Raven had turned her back on him over a part of him as innate as his mutation was. The irony was that he’d lost her anyway, in the end, and just as he’d feared it had been because of a man he loved. 

“Jesus, Charles,” she blew out a long breath. “Maybe you could have fallen for someone without the homicidal impulses.” 

“I’m flattered you think I had a choice in the matter,” he muttered, but forced a smile and reached out to take her hand. “But you’re well? Afraid I don’t have much of a choice but to worry about you, especially if you’re going to be involved in...things like this.”

“Someone has to be,” she retorted. “Some of the things I’ve seen, Charles—” she stopped herself, clearly with some effort. “I don’t want to fight right now, ok? Can we give that a try?”

Charles nodded, knowing it wouldn’t be easy. “We didn’t have much of a chance to talk, the last time we saw each other—” 

“When your boyfriend tried to kill me to save the world?” Raven interjected. “Imagine that.”

“Yes,” Charles agreed wryly. “He does tend to overreact, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.” She laughed at that, as he’d hoped. It was a hard thing to forgive, to justify forgiving to himself. In a way, it was a relief to find her with Erik again, an implicit blessing on his choice to let the past go. “Tell me how you’ve been; no lectures, I promise. Alex told me about how you saved him and the others, in Vietnam. That was very brave.”

She stilled at the compliment, lips pursed as though waiting for him to qualify the praise with an admonishment about her being reckless, or a criticism of her methods. Patiently, Charles waited for the (admittedly well-deserved) mistrust to pass, for her shoulders to relax. 

He didn’t know how long they spoke, before Hank returned. Seeing the way Raven straightened up immediately and Hank’s eyes dropped to the floor, Charles excused himself to check in on Peter and Erik. They deserved their chance to speak alone as well. 

Even with Raven’s reassurance, the tightness in his chest didn’t entirely ease until he saw Erik in another cot, pale and bruised, but breathing. His arm was in a sling, and there were visible bandages around his chest peeking out from under the blanket, but he was there, and he was alive. 

“Has he been sleeping the whole time?” he asked Peter quietly, moving to where the boy sat next to the bed. He looked almost as pale as his father was. 

“He’s in and out,” Peter muttered, preemptively shrugging off any comfort with his tone. “I think he’s pretty stoned.”

“What a terrifying prospect,” Charles said lightly. He kept his hands folded in his lap, not pushing Peter to accept any commiseration if he didn’t want it. “He’s going to be fine, you know; I imagine Erik treats broken ribs the way the rest of us would a sprained ankle.”

“Yeah, sure,” Peter said mulishly. “I mean, it was inevitable, wasn’t it? Guy pulls down buildings for fun; eventually one was going to land on his head.”

There were depths of hurt lying beneath his words. Sometimes, it was easy to forget how young his students were, when they had so much of the world already stacked against them. Brash as he was, despite the impressive criminal record for someone his age, Peter was still a teenager who wanted his father to approve of him. _You haven’t done anything wrong,_ Charles wanted to tell Peter, _he runs from everyone he cares about._ He knew the lad wouldn’t listen to him yet. 

“Why don’t you, Hank, and Raven find us something to eat?” he suggested instead. “I’ll keep watch here.” 

Peter fled the room almost before he’d finished speaking. With a sigh, Charles rolled closer to the bed and took Erik’s hand in his own. “You do know how to win hearts and minds, don’t you?” 

The words caught in his throat and he laughed shortly, feeling his eyes start to burn. Christ. Now that he was alone with Erik it was crashing down on him, the adrenaline and fear of the day. “Don’t ever do this to me again, you miserable bastard,” he whispered. 

Unaware of the fear and worry he’d engendered, Erik continued to sleep the sleep of a man under the influence of considerable pain-killers. Charles watched him, tracking the even rise and fall of his chest, the occasional flicker of his eyelashes, the reassuring signs of life, until his own eyes started to grow heavy. 

He wasn’t sure if he slept, or if he’d merely rested his eyes for a moment in the windowless room, but when he opened them again, Erik was awake. Or, at least, his eyes were open: his pupils were dilated in the low light and his mind was hazy and hard to focus on when Charles tentatively brushed against it. Dreaming, perhaps, or under the influence of sufficient drugs that there was no material difference. “Are you in any pain?” Charles inquired as Erik blinked slowly. “I can fetch Raven.” 

“The laboratory?” Erik asked, taking his hand from Charles’s and trying to push himself up. 

Hurriedly, Charles put his hand on his sternum to press him back down, trying to avoid the bandages and any bruising or broken bones underneath. Weak as he was, Erik didn’t put up much of a fight. “It was destroyed; Erik, you should stay still.”

Erik frowned at him, then rolled his head loosely to the side, looking around the small room. After a moment, his eyes slipped shut again. Just when Charles thought he might have fallen asleep again, he groped for Charles’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “Did they get out?”

“They? Erik, who do you mean—? The whole block was leveled, Erik; the news was reporting that you were dead.”

“Dead,” Erik echoed. For a moment his expression was heartbreakingly open, before he closed his eyes and turned his face away. But for Erik’s tight grip on his hand, he was so still Charles would have thought he was asleep again, or worse. He chuckled, the sound like crushed glass in his throat. “I’m not dead. Dead, death, _met_. It’s one letter off from ‘truth,’ did you know that?” he ran his finger over the back of Charles’s hand, tracing a series of characters. “My mother told me that, on the train. About the golem. The only way to kill it is to remove the _aleph_.”

Having a sinking suspicion he knew what train Erik was referring to, Charles shook his head and brushed his free hand through Erik’s short hair, forcing himself to smile even though Erik still was looking into the shadows of the room instead of at him. “Don’t think about that right now. You need to rest, so I can yell at you for scaring a good five years off my life once you’re back to yourself.”

“I wondered why it never came, in the camps, to defend its people,” Erik continued as though he hadn’t spoken. His voice was soft and very far away. “It couldn’t have been killed; it doesn’t have a soul. Just the word.”

“Enough,” Charles said firmly. He turned Erik’s face back to his and leaned in to kiss his forehead to emphasize the point. Erik sighed at the contact; before he could speak again, Charles kissed him again on the lips. “Enough.” 

“You shouldn’t be here,” Erik insisted, reaching up to grasp vaguely at his arm. “You should be home. Safe. What’s the point if you’re here, if you get hurt. If Peter gets hurt. Charles—”

“No one is going to get hurt,” Charles told him calmly, leaning in as Erik moved his hand to his neck, to his cheek, seeming to need the contact. “You just need to sleep.” Erik kept tugging at him, weak and almost aimless, and Charles relented, carefully moving himself from his chair to the narrow cot. It was precarious to fit in the small strip of bed between the edge of the mattress and leaning on Erik’s injuries, but the way Erik relaxed made the likelihood of a fall worthwhile. 

“Maybe the golem forgot it was a monster,” Erik murmured against his neck, barely audible. “What if it dreamed it was human?”

*

“Why is it that you only come in by my bedroom?”

The question was a difficult one to get out. Erik, with his single-minded efficiency, had long since mapped every erogenous zone on Charles’s body, and spent the last ten or fifteen or twenty minutes (time was starting to get away from Charles now) with the entirety of his focus on Charles’s nipples, alternating between pinching and rubbing them with his fingers, and the warm, wicked heat of his mouth. Wave after wave of pleasure was cresting over Charles as a result and making talking difficult—his orgasms were no longer single, bright bursts of pleasure, but Erik was still damned good at causing them. 

Still, it was a question that had nagged at Charles over three years of separation now, and one he always forgot to ask until too late for just this reason. 

With a parting swipe of his tongue that made Charles’s synapses sparkle, Erik raised his head and looked at him thoughtfully. “Would you rather I come in through Hank’s room?” he asked, and dragged one thumb over Charles’s mouth before leaning in for a kiss. “I don’t have any particular desire to see him naked, but if you’d rather....”

Charles smacked Erik’s shoulder hard, but even mock indignation was impossible when Erik applied his teeth to his earlobe, making Charles melt into the mattress. “Erik.”

It was April, and the sun was rising pink and gold over the grounds, but the house was completely silent. Erik had left the door open a crack when he’d come in, and Charles could feel the cool breeze on his skin whenever Erik stopped touching him. He’d come just before the dawn this time, and had immediately kissed Charles into wakefulness as he shed his clothes and the mien of Magneto. 

“Charles,” Erik retorted in kind, and kissed him again. Charles threaded his fingers into his hair and playfully poked at his mind, but was just as casually rebuffed. 

“I did not dedicate nearly enough time in my youth for good sex,” Erik muttered against Charles’s mouth, and Charles could feel his grin. “Isn’t that good enough reason?”

“It is, but it’s not _your_ reason.” Charles ran his hands down Erik’s sides. He wondered if he’d be able to get hard this morning; it was always a pleasure to watch Erik’s face as he was penetrated, to feel his mind go slack and open and trusting. He could simulate it mentally, of course, but being joined flesh to flesh was a different kind of intimacy. 

“Because each time I think maybe you’ll be quiet long enough for us to fuck without getting interrogated?” Erik suggested, pressing a slow line of kisses down Charles’s throat. “I’m an optimist.”

Now that was funny. Charles laughed outright, and felt Erik’s amusement bright in his mind, his smile against Charles’s skin. “Come up here, and you can shut me up properly,” he suggested, sliding into Erik’s mind long enough to give Erik a full-colour, full-sensation image of Charles with his dick in his mouth. He would let the question go for now; it was enough that Erik wanted to be here. 

Afterward, when Erik was spent and drowsing next to him, Charles ran his fingers slowly through his hair. He didn’t much want to get up, though he could feel the children starting to stir. “You should have told me you would visit for your birthday,” he ventured. It was possible that Erik had entirely forgotten what day it was; equally likely was that he knew but hoped Charles had forgotten. Well , bugger that. “We could have had a celebration.”

Erik snorted softly, not bothering to open his eyes. “That’s why I didn’t tell you.” He yawned and rolled over onto his stomach, nuzzling deeper into the pillow. “The big bad mutant bogeyman doesn’t have birthdays.”

He looked about as threatening as a kitten at the moment, and Charles tried not to smile. That, he knew, was getting to the crux of the matter. He leaned down and kissed Erik’s rumpled hair. “You’re right that it’s best for Magneto not to be seen on campus, for discretion’s sake,” he murmured, “But Erik Lehnsherr is always welcome. It’s your home, too.”

Erik didn’t respond, and Charles didn’t push him. Not on his birthday. After a long minute he got out of bed and prepared for the day, wishing he could spend another hour in bed. 

“Make sure you stop in to say hello to Peter before you go back to sleep; he has classes starting at 9:00 this morning and Moira will have something to say if he’s tardy again.”

Erik moved one hand vaguely against the sheets, which Charles opted to take as an affirmative. Good; Erik had been unconscious again by the time they’d left Arizona, and it had been somewhat uncomfortable to have Peter be the one to find Charles dozing in bed with him. The boy had been avoiding his eyes ever since. Erik’s uniquely blunt approach to parenting might be what was called for there. What a strange family it was that he had.

Charles paused at the door to look back at him, sprawled out and half-asleep again already. He pressed a psychic kiss to the nape of Erik’s neck, and felt him smile against the pillow.

*

Mutants poured into the school that summer, battered and with haunted eyes. Most of them didn’t stay long, spending only a few weeks to rest up in safety. Charles fed them, clothed them, gave them what funds he could spare from the school’s budget to help them where they needed to go, and soothed the fears in their minds.

Erik was sending them, he knew, refugees from the labs that were the last of Trask’s legacy, or fleeing states where mutant discrimination was in full-force if not officially sanctioned. Some of the younger children went with the adults when they left, adopted into new families of choice, but a handful stayed to join the ranks of those students who had no other place to call home. 

Though his name had been all through the papers to the point that Charles wasn’t sure what was truth and what was sensationalized, he didn’t see Erik again until the end of the summer. 

It was late August, a night heavy with the threat of a thunderstorm. Charles was awake and restless, rolling up and down the ground floor corridors to double-check windows he already knew were closed and locked, when the cars rolled up the driveway. 

Raven was with him again this time, stepping out of the second car as Charles got the front door open. She moved effortlessly, but Charles could feel her bone-deep exhaustion as she helped the others out of the back seat. One of them, a little white-haired girl, reached desperately for Erik instead as Raven scooped her up. 

Thunder rumbled overhead. 

Erik caught his eye and nodded briskly. “Get them settled,” he said to Raven. “I’ll make sure we weren’t followed.”

He wasn’t given a chance to ask for an explanation before Erik was already pulling away, the second vehicle following without a driver, pulled along by his powers. Acting automatically, he reached up to take the toddler from Raven, sending soothing pulses of calm across her mind. Her crying quieted at the psychic touch, and Raven squeezed Charles’s shoulder in mute gratitude. He wished Raven would let him do more for her, with the way her mind was racing with adrenaline and fear, but she didn’t ask and he didn’t offer.

He made the adults tea, the children hot chocolate, because that was what one did in a crisis, and found them all rooms, and refrained from interrogating Raven about what had happened. Was this it? Was it finally over?

“She likes you,” Raven noted softly once the others were settled, nodding at the sleeping child Charles was still holding. They’d retreated to his room, where Charles had tried not to watch the clock ticking through the minutes. Two hours without word from Erik. 

“I don’t think we were followed across state lines. He’ll be fine, Charles.”

He forced a smile. “He always is. The weather has cleared, so perhaps that’s a good sign.”

“The weather has cleared because she’s asleep,” Raven snorted, stretching in her chair. 

Charles looked down at the sleeping girl in his lap, one of her hands fisted in his robe, and stroked her brilliantly white hair. He sent a gentle tendril of thought into her mind, feeling the edges of her powers, dormant now but sparkling with banked energy. How remarkable, a child that small had caused such a threatening storm. 

“It’s scary, how you’ve settled into this whole responsible dad role,” Raven continued, the last words muffled around a yawn. “Wasn’t that long ago I had to babysit you while you got drunk and hit on the co-eds.”

“Wasn’t that long ago that you were this small,” he murmured in response, finally tearing his eyes away from the girl. She didn’t look more than three or four, but with how thin she was it was difficult to pin down an approximation. 

“You didn’t know me when I was that small,” Raven retorted, getting to her feet. Charles smiled when she stooped to kiss the top of his head, and reached up to catch her hand.

“You’ll stay for a while, won’t you? No running off before the dawn.”

Her smile was sad. “Goodnight, Charles.”

He returned the smile, trying to show nothing of the pang in his heart. “Goodnight.”

He didn’t sleep, however, not until hours had crept past into the darkest time of the morning. He felt Erik coming, even before his door creaked open and Erik levitated himself up onto the balcony. His mind was greyed over with exhaustion, but shot through with flashes of fury and despair...and hopelessness, which Charles had never felt from him before. 

They didn’t speak as Erik removed his boots and travel-worn clothes, as he took the child from Charles and tucked her in with a weary tenderness that made Charles’s heart ache. The bed was more than large enough for the three of them, but Erik held Charles close, too tightly.

“Charles—” the word was brittle, splintered at the edges. “They were. I—” He fell silent.

He didn’t need to ask what Erik had done; he could read it in the smell of ashes and sweat on his skin, the way he was braced as though expecting Charles to push him away at any moment. _Oh, my love_. 

“Sleep,” Charles whispered into his chest, trying to soothe the waves of helpless rage pouring off of him. “It’s all right.”

“No,” Erik said thickly, but some of the tension bled out of his muscles nonetheless. “No, it isn’t.”

He didn’t say anything more. Charles closed his eyes and held Erik tightly as he shuddered, his breathing harsh in the stillness of the room. His mind battered at Charles’s own, a tangle of self-recrimination and exhaustion: he’d thought he could stop Trask’s legacy, but there were others who agreed with his work, and every time he destroyed one another would take his place. Every time he destroyed one, he took another step further from _home_ and _peace_ and _forgiveness_. He didn’t know how long he could fight; he didn’t know how he could bear to stop. 

“Come home,” Charles murmured into his chest like a prayer, speaking it into the skin directly over Erik’s pounding heart. The next time they met, they would both pretend he hadn’t asked. But for now, it wasn’t a fiction he could maintain. “Please come home.”

*

For almost a year after that night, their trysts were rushed and rare. Charles lobbied in Washington for a federal Mutant Non-Discrimination Act, threw campaign dollars at opponents of senators who pushed for Mutant Registration, and continued to trade unapologetically on his father’s name and his own role in saving the president’s life.

Erik had changed tactics and was becoming more discreet. Magneto’s name stayed out of the papers for the most part, but Charles could read between the lines, and many reports of “industrial accidents” and “natural disasters” were, he knew, Erik’s destruction of laboratories that, as far as the government was concerned, didn’t exist. When he did appear under his name, it was outside the United States, and took the form of violent threats rather than violent acts. The local mutant populations rallied to his side, and protests and clashes with police over anti-mutant legislation were common. 

Slowly, the tide started to turn.

*

Cold air dragged Charles out of sleep, and he cracked his eyes open to see Erik shaking snow off his cloak before he folded it over the armchair and bent stiffly to unlace his boots. After more than five months since he’d had so much as a postcard, Erik was a very welcome sight indeed.

“Close the door and come to bed,” Charles mumbled, tugging the blankets up higher. “Before the children hear you and think Father Christmas is here.” He smiled to himself, warmed though: he hadn’t thought that Erik would be coming home for the holidays. 

“It looks like Christmas vomited all over your house, Charles,” Erik said dryly, slipping between the sheets. He was cold, and Charles sleepily squirmed away from his frigid bloody hands. “How many trees did you sacrifice for your holiday?”

“I bought a menorah, too,” he protested, compromising by grabbing Erik’s hands in his own and rubbing them to warm them up properly. He’d felt a bit foolish when Erik hadn’t shown up for Hanukkah, but Kitty had been kind enough to show him how to light it, and had diplomatically not laughed when he’d stumbled over the Hebrew. 

“Hanukiah,” Erik corrected with a chuckle, and that sound made Charles tug him closer, no matter how frigid his skin still was. He’d missed that laugh. “You realize that Hanukkah isn’t actually that important a holiday?”

“ _Sei kein Arsch,_ ” Charles grumbled, a phrase he’d picked up from Peter over the years, and one he knew he’d butchered when Erik just laughed harder. “For that, you’re not getting your Hanukkah present.”

“Oh really?” Erik drawled, then pushed his cold hands up under Charles’s pyjama top. 

“Bastard!” Charles yelped, but he didn’t push him away. Instead, he grabbed Erik’s hair and pulled him in for (finally, finally) a kiss. “Fine, but you’ll have to fetch it,” he conceded when they broke apart, waving one hand in the direction of the chess board and the neatly wrapped present that sat on top of it. Said wrapping was courtesy of Hank; it had looked rather sad and lumpy when Charles had attempted it. 

Erik propped himself up on one elbow and looked at the package. His brow furrowed, and Charles bit his lower lip. Of course, Erik would be able to feel the metal contours, even without opening it. 

“Charles—” he started.

“Just...open it. Humour me. It’s after midnight, which means it’s Christmas, and I. Well. I’d like you to open your present.”

With a gesture, Erik levitated the package over to the bed and, with a sidelong glance at Charles, pulled back the paper and opened the small silver box inside to reveal the key nestled in a bed of tissue paper. 

“Front door key,” Charles explained, resting his hand on Erik’s. “Which I know you don’t need, even if you didn’t prefer to enter through my bedroom, but I...thought you should have one.”

The key lifted out of the box and settled into Erik’s palm. He stared at it. 

“Say something,” Charles suggested, sitting up as well to press a kiss under his ear. 

Erik blinked and shook his head slightly, turning to smile crookedly at Charles. His eyes were a bit red. “I didn’t get you anything.”

“Yes you did,” Charles told him, pressing his palm flat against Erik’s chest. “And since Ororo and the others won’t be up for at least another five hours, I hope, you have time to give me another present, too.”

Erik let himself be tugged back down under the blankets, setting the key on the bedside table and settling comfortably on top of Charles. “I’ll have to leave before they get up,” he cautioned. 

Charles tried not to look as let down as he felt. He wanted Erik to feel at home here, to know he was welcome, part of their family, _wanted_. He blinked hard, but forced a smile. Best not to ruin the few hours they did have. “That’s all right.” he ran his fingers slowly through Erik’s hair, and pulled him in for a kiss. “It’s not your holiday, after all.”

Erik turned his head to kiss Charles’s palm. “I’ll make it up to you.”

He was as good as his word: unlike their last few, rushed encounters, which were all desperate hurry, racing the clock and each other to orgasm, this time Erik took his time, kissing and touching Charles languidly all over. Cocooned as they were in the blankets, it was warm and close and intimate, bodies and minds tangled together. 

Hours later, Charles woke from where he was dozing with his head on Erik’s chest to see him twining the key around and around his fingers. His mind was quiet, but pensive.

*

Waking up to find his bed empty and Erik gone was nothing unusual, so Charles didn’t permit himself to dwell on it overlong. He got up and wrapped himself in his robe—as far as he was concerned, the tradition of staying in one’s pyjamas until after presents was as important as Santa Claus or a Christmas tree—before heading downstairs.

He would need at least one strong cuppa before the students who had remained over break came downstairs, and turned toward the kitchen first. The lights were already on, and there was the scent of something delicious cooking, and he could hear quiet voices from inside. 

He knew better than to think his senses were playing tricks on him, but _that_ voice....Heart thudding, he wheeled himself a bit more quickly the rest of the way. 

“Good morning, professor!” Kitty called from the kitchen table, where she was occupied with peeling potatoes. “Your friend came to visit after all. You didn’t tell me that by ‘Mr. Lehnsherr’ you meant ‘Magneto.’”

Erik glanced over his shoulder at her from where he had the frying pan going, his expression wry. “You thought my mama would name me _Magneto_?” 

Charles...didn’t manage to say anything. 

“We’re making latkes, professor,” Kitty ventured when the silence dragged on for too long, looking anxiously from Erik to him and back. “I didn’t think you’d mind, since we missed doing them for Hannukah.”

“You’re up earlier than expected,” Erik added. “Your tea isn’t ready yet.”

He looked...nervous. Yes, that’s what it was. Erik Lehnsherr was standing in his kitchen like a Jewish Christmas miracle and looking nervous about his welcome. 

God, but Charles wanted to kiss him. 

“I think they’ll make a lovely breakfast,” he reassured Kitty belatedly, once he was certain of his voice. He wheeled further into the kitchen to investigate what Erik was doing and steal a bite (and slip his hand surreptitiously into Erik’s own, once Kitty went back to peeling potatoes).

“Are you staying?” he murmured quietly. _I’m furious with you right now. Springing this on me when I can’t grab you and kiss you the way I’d like._

Erik squeezed his hand, then let go to flip the latkes over. “If you’ll have me.” _You could use your powers and keep her from seeing._

_Absolutely not: this was your brilliant idea, and you’ll have to live with the sexual frustration._

Erik’s laugh made Kitty glance up at the two of them briefly. She furrowed her brow, realizing there was a conversation going on to which she wasn’t privy, and huffed a sigh. Grownups, her thoughts ran clearly, were needlessly complicated. 

“Thank you for this,” Charles said in an undertone, the words rushed. He pushed his thoughts against Erik’s mind as he spoke, wanting him to feel what this meant, even if he currently couldn’t express it as eloquently as he wanted. “I’d hoped. Well. Of course I hoped, but.” 

“I had half a mind to make an entrance with my new front door key while you were all opening presents,” Erik said. He glanced over at the cupboard and levitated out the kettle and a tin of tea as he spoke. His mind was warm with cautious, banked joy, and Charles wrapped himself up in the sensation like a blanket. “But you fell asleep on top of me, and by the time I got up this one was awake. I was trapped.” 

Lies, all of it, Charles knew. 

“I know you have a life and a routine here,” Erik continued, setting the fried latkes aside and starting the next batch, “and I don’t want to disrupt that.” 

Charles glanced up from measuring tea into his teapot at the edge to Erik’s voice. His shoulders were a bit tense, as though bracing himself for a fight. He certainly did have one coming—from Hank, from Moira, from Charles himself—but it wouldn’t be worse than any other battle he had already survived. 

“There are some things that can stand a bit of disruption,” he said easily. He knew his students and his teachers, and he had faith in them, just as he had faith in Erik. Charles would be forty-five next year; Erik forty-seven. Surely they’d earned a chance to enjoy each other’s company uninterrupted while Erik’s hair wasn’t completely grey and Charles still had most of his.

“Of course, if you start teaching mutant supremacy we’ll have one hell of a row, but otherwise we ought to be fine.”

“It won’t be easy, Charles,” Erik insisted. 

The irony of him repeating Charles’s cautionary words from years before made him smile despite himself. _Oh my darling._ Only just arrived and already looking for the reason Charles would tell him to leave. “Nothing with you ever has been. You’re arrogant, demanding, utterly certain of your moral superiority, and I love you, you foolish man.” It felt good to finally say it aloud for Erik to hear. 

The spatula fell into the frying pan with a clatter. “Oh.”

Charles grinned at the word, huge and bright. He should have said it before, should have said it as often as he could, but he would make up for it now. So, with Erik’s mind still ringing with surprise and Kitty’s presence be damned, he grabbed Erik’s hand and yanked him down into a kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> Ginsberg's _The Fall of America: Poems of These States_ was published in 1973. The other poetry referenced is from Neruda, most of it anachronistically taken from Stephen Tapscott’s 1986 translations. 
> 
> Though in reality the MK Ultra Experiments had finished by the 1970s, I imagine a world where mutants with actual mind control powers were revealed in 1973 would have meant their continuation. 
> 
> The lines of poetry in the note Charles leaves in Erik's pocket are from "Love, we're going home now."


End file.
